Jinx (clothing)

Jinx
Private
Industry Fashion Design
Headquarters San Diego, U.S.
Area served
 Worldwide
Website www.jinx.com

Jinx, stylized as J!NX, is a San Diego, California-based clothing line started by Sean Gailey and Tim Norris in 1999 that creates video game-themed apparel.[1]

Early History

Jinx was started as a home business in 1999 by two web developers: Sean Gailey and Tim Norris. The company produced T-shirts designed by Gailey on the theme of hacker culture. Though the enterprise doubled in size in the first year,[2] the company remained a side-project of the two founders until 2003, when they partnered with Jason Kraus. The three decided to work full-time for the company after a snowboarding trip to Mammoth Mountain. At this time they began to use video game themes for the majority of their pieces.[3] The following year the company moved out of Gailey's bedroom and into their first office.[2] Gailey describes the multiple themes that Jinx uses in its apparel as including, "video games, art, geek culture, Internet memes, giant robots, gadgets and comics."[1]

Jinx Clothing and Website

Jinx has worked with video game and other media companies through licensing deals in order to produce official product lines, including Blizzard Entertainment (the producer of the video games World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft),[2] Minecraft,[4] and Star Wars: The Old Republic.[5] The company hires gamers as its employees in order to remain closely linked to the video gaming community.[6]

Jinx also hosts an online community which had over 600,000 users as of 2010 that, among other things, holds weekly trivia contests and a photo altering contest called Tweakfest. The site is also used as a sounding board for new design concepts, some of which are submitted by the users themselves.[2] There are also rewards programs associated with the community called Jinx Gold and Jinx Exp, whereby online participation leads to price discounts or other prizes.[6]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Darius Baptist (Vol 10, Issue 20). "Props: Jinx". YRB Magazine. pp. 102–103. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Jinx Wants You to Get Into It". Game Fan Magazine. April 2010. p. 14.
  3. ↑ Curtis Silver (November 9, 2011). "Geeks Shall Never Go Shirtless Again". Wired.com. Retrieved March 26, 2012.
  4. ↑ Mike Fahey (March 22, 2011). "Jinx Launches the Official Minecraft Merchant Store". Kotaku. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Catching Up With Star Wars: The Old Republic". TheForce.Net. March 3, 2012. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 James Bernard Frost (Vol 1, Issue 4). "Keep Your Shirt On". World of Warcraft Magazine. pp. 111–115. Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links